


The Quiet One

by Zighana



Category: Far Cry 3
Genre: Body Image, Bondage and Discipline, Disabled Character of Color, F/M, Forced Relationship, Hair Kink, Horror, Mindfuck, Mute Characters of Color, Non-Sexual Submission, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship, Plus Sized Characters, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Silence Kink, Stockholm Syndrome, Strangulation, Survival, Toxic Relationships, Trauma, Vaas needs a Therapist, loss of voice, original characters of color
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2019-10-18 04:54:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17574287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zighana/pseuds/Zighana
Summary: After suffering from Vaas' attack, Dominique is left unable to speak. Unfortunately for her, Vaas likes them quiet.





	1. Chapter 1

The sun’s reflection on the white sand does nothing to soothe the pounding headache vibrating in Dominique’s skull .

She coughs up another bout of seawater. She would’ve drowned if someone hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her out of the gutted remains of what was once her cruise boat.

She tries to remember the hours leading up to this but it only comes in bursts; she was having a good time, she was laughing and drinking mojitos with friends, celebrating her twenty-third birthday. She was...knocked over. There was a loud boom. There was shouting, there was gunshots, there was...her body...about to sink into the blue abyss before someone grabbed her by her braids and pulled so tightly some of them were ripped out by the roots. $150 and some change, gone to waste. 

A boot digs into her side and she’s rolled onto her back. God, the sun hurts. It hurts too much to even see. She just wants to close her eyes and…

The boot is on her cheek now. She can taste the filth and sand without even licking her lips. 

The bright sun is obstructed by the grace of the shadow that’s leaning in to look at her.

Through her blurred vision, she sees a man. A dark-skinned man with a mohawk, a scar, and horrific looking eyes. They’re so...bright, with tiny pupils like he was on a bender the night before. All she can see is...vibrant green eyes with dark rings around them. 

The boot leaves her cheek and the strange man crouches low. A gun comes into her line of sight and she freezes. 

The barrel is pressed to her temple.

If Dominique could, she’d be pissing herself. 

Someone runs to the man and talks in a language she doesn’t know, holding up her fanny pack of her bare essentials and dumping it. Her cell phone, mascara, lip gloss, and her modest wallet with twenty dollars plop into the sand, drenched in water, before the fanny pack is chucked at her and smacks into her gut.

The man with the green eyes takes her wallet and opens it.

“Dominique Price,” he reads. He has an accent, Spanish from the way he pronounced her name. 

“From California,” he adds, wheezing out a laugh. 

“Every fucking day, you Californians wind up here. Maybe this island is a surfboard and flip-flop magnet.”

Dominique tries to talk, but her voice is stuck in her throat. She needs water, some medical attention and a shield from the unforgiving sun cooking her copper-toned skin. 

The man digs through her wallet, pocketing her twenty dollars. He pulls out her cards, photos of her family and observes each one. It feels unnerving the way he’d... _study_ , the family photo of her and her family last Christmas. It’s such a violation of privacy and the fact she’s in no position to say anything makes her helpless. 

“Beautiful family you got here, they look like they care about you. Don’t they?” He asks her, jamming the photo in her face. She sees her parents, her siblings, her nieces and nephews, and the family dog and reality sets in.

She may never see them again.

She’s hyperventilating, now, choked sobs wracking her body. 

This is real.

All of this is real.

“Shh-sh-sh-sh,” The strange man coos, smearing his bandaged thumb over her cheek.

“They send money and you can go home to them by sun up, okay?”

He’s lying. 

She eyes the man. Those eyes are looking right through her and it sends shivers down her spine.

For as long as she lives, those eyes will haunt her.

~~~

Dominique sits across the few friends that survived the cruise massacre. Her best friend, Anika, is bound at the wrists and gagged. Carmen is lying on her side, bleeding in her leg from a gunshot wound; she tried to escape and one of the men shot her. Mike is sitting cross-legged and nude with his hands tied behind his back. 

“They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?” Carmen croaks out. She turns to face Dominique, her hazel eyes lacking the life they used to have. 

“I don’t know,” Dominique confesses. She wants to believe they’ll be sent home as soon as their families pay, but she knows it’s not in the cards for her. Her family is lower middle-class, barely getting by; the ransom money needed to get Dominique home is so far out of their price range and it’s no guarantee she’ll even come home if they do manage to scrap up enough money. Carmen, Anika, and Mike all come from well-off families and they all have professions to afford the expensive price tag; they have a better shot than she does. 

“They’re going to kill me first,” she muses. Her friends freeze.

“Don’t say that. Don’t give them a reason to,” Carmen replies. 

As if on cue, the man arrives, dragging his machete across the wooden cage. Dominique prays he’d be dumb enough to slice the cage open but he doesn’t. 

“I’ve spent all fucking day trying to figure out what to do with you and I’m coming up with nothing.” He tuts. 

“Got off the phone with some investors and despite the _Dominicana_ ,” he points at Carmen with his machete, “sounding enticing, they’re not interested in you. Hopefully, I can get to your families and maybe they can spend a pretty penny on you so you can come home.”

He struts around the cage, dragging the machete into the dirt. 

“Maybe I could feed you to the locals. The _fat one_ would keep them fed for at least a week.”

Dominique doesn’t even flinch. Her weight is always an easy target. 

“What about you, _Rasta_?” He points at Anika. 

“You got one fuck of a mouth on you. Maybe you can service my men and keep them happy so they’d get off their time of the month.” 

Anika shouts through her gag in disgust.

“What about you, _nurse_?” He gestures to Mike. 

“You weren’t good enough to be a doctor? Huh?” He goads. Mike averts his eyes. 

The man laughs. 

“You four are entertaining. It’s going to be sad when I have to kill you.”

Carmen shakes, Mike’s eyes widen in terror, and Anika breaks into tears while Dominique sits stone-faced.

The man takes a picture of them on a phone. 

“A photo for the memories, yeah?” He says.

“Please,” Carmen whispers out through the tears before sobbing, “please don’t.”

The man shushes them again. His machete catches Dominique’s arm, biting into the sleeve of her filthy floral blouse.

“What about you, _gorda_? You got...a doctor, a nurse, a Dominican, and you. A fucking _hairstylist_.” He spits out that word, tossing Dominique’s business card in the cage. 

“What do you think I should do with you?”

Dominique doesn’t even dignify a response. She faces the cage’s entrance, watching the sunset on the horizon. If it wasn’t for this horrific turn of events, this sunset would’ve been considered beautiful. She would’ve taken a photo and placed it in her scrapbook. 

The machete’s blade is starting to cut from the man adding pressure, trying to milk a response.

“Hey,” the man says, getting closer to her. She can smell the filth, the liquor, the drugs, oozing from his pores so strongly it makes her sick.

“Hey!” He yells. He grabs the braids poking through the cage and pulls so hard her head snaps back. He’s got her full attention now.

“Answer me when I’m talking to you!” He’s screaming, now, pulling her hair harder. He’s a child, having a tantrum because he’s getting ignored.

Even as she breathes through her tears, she won’t give him an answer. 

She’s not even here; she’s back in her cozy apartment with her cat, binge-watching her soap operas. She’s at work, washing a client’s hair and listening to the daily drama they dump on her. She is at her mother’s house, listening to her mother nag her about not being married and how much she wants grandchildren. 

She’s anywhere but here.

His shouting becomes muffled white noise and the pain is no longer there; he could rip all of her braids out for all she cares. She’s going to die here and at this point it doesn’t matter.

She accepts it. 

“Don’t want to talk to me, huh? Think you’re gonna escape into your fucking fantasy world and ignore me? Huh?” The man’s voice comes back into focus. Dominique snaps back to reality and sees the man in the cage now, stomping towards her while her friends scramble out of his way. In seconds his hands are wrapped around her throat and her air is cut off. She gasps for air, clawing at his hands to let go. 

“You paying attention now, you fucking bitch? Huh?” The man’s in her face now, those creepy eyes blown wide. She digs her nails into his skin and draws blood, but he’s unfazed. She kicks, claws, gasps and squeaks, but it doesn’t change anything. Her vision is getting blurry, her head light as a feather.

This is it, this is how she’s going to die, on an island she doesn’t know, in a cage like an undignified animal, strangled by a man whose eyes are going to be the last thing she sees. She stops struggling, rolls her eyes to the back of her head and lets go. 

He throws her body against the ground like a ragdoll and it’s then she gains her breath. She coughs and gags, precious air entering her body. When she gains her breath, the man stands before her, sneering at her. Her friends scramble to her, Anika checking her eyes and vitals. 

“Dominique, Dominique, talk to me.” Mike whispers. His eyes are filled with unshed tears. 

_“Mike,”_ Dominique croaks out, her voice fading. She tries to talk, but no sound comes out. She tries again, over and over, but hears silence. 

Her voice is gone.

“Well, look at that,” the man muses. 

“We got a mute.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dominique's secret is exposed.

_“You sure you don’t want to live with your sister instead?”_

_Dominique lifts up the final box and makes her way into her new apartment. Her mother trails after her._

_“I’m sure, Ma.” Dominique tells her. Her mother frowns._

_“I don’t feel comfortable with you living by yourself in this apartment. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but you are a single black woman living by herself in the seedy part of town. You’re a target, baby.”_

_The box cutter slices through the tape. Dominique is taking out her portraits to hang on the wall._

_“It won’t be like last time, Ma. I promise.” She tells her._

_“Jason Brody is locked away on the other side of town. He can’t hurt me, or anyone else, anymore.”_

 

Dominique tries to adjust to her new surroundings, but the rope digging into her wrists brings her little comfort. 

She’s in an entertainment room of sorts, tied to a stripper pole that has seen better days, wearing nothing but a cord necklace with a glass jade pendant. The pirates didn’t snatch it off her because it wasn’t worth anything. 

She was drug in here after she’d lost control of her bladder in the cage. In her defense, it’s very hard to communicate basic needs without her voice, and it’s not like her captors are necessarily _attentive_. 

They’d been trying to figure out what to do with her; the leader came to a conclusion that since her friends had experience in medicine and know basic CPR, they’d be of use more on the island than shipped off or dead. They had since left the cage, leaving Dominique as their weakest link. 

The entertainment room opens and it’s the leader, carrying a bucket that sloshes with momentum. He walks to her and sits. 

She’s as naked as the day she was born; his eyes don’t hide their judgment on her fat physique. When he zeroes in on her stomach, his expression doesn’t show disgust but…curiosity. 

He touches her stomach, his fingers brushing against the spot that sparks a shudder from her.

He notices the scars. All of them. 

His eyes follow his fingers as they travel across her body, gracing the scars that mar her once perfect skin. He touches her arms and she remembers her defensive wounds from Jason’s attack, her torso the stabs and slashes from a buck knife he’d pulled out of his boot. 

The man crouches low to stroke the more degrading ones on her inner thighs and she tries not to cry; this was where she was violated.

The man skims his fingers over her back and Dominique flashes to crawling on the floor, gurgling for help, as Jason sat on her hips and carved words into her skin that to this day no one can pinpoint what they mean and what language it originates from.

The man’s hand lingers on the carved words on her back, halting at the base of her spine.

The man seems to know what the words are; he sounds them out before saying them out loud, sounding fluent. 

“ _The Rakyat whore is dead._ ” He translates. 

He steps back from her and maintains eye contact; Dominique can’t help but feel exposed in more ways than one. He’d seen her body, her scars, her secrets and her insecurities; this strange man has seen everything and he keeps _looking_ at her.

“Who did this to you?” He asks her. 

A pause. The gears turn in the man’s head. 

He wheezes out a laugh.

“Where are my fucking manners? You can’t even fucking talk.” He laughs out. 

He crouches again, stroking his facial hair and looking focused. 

Without a warning, he throws the bucket at her, splashing her naked body with ice cold water. 

She gasps in shock, flinching from the impact. The room’s cold air hit her and she feels her body break out in goosebumps. As she’s chattering her teeth, she tries to arch her body away from the leader for modesty.

“You fucking stink,” he tells her. He rests his hand on her thigh, thumbing a water droplet. As much as she wants him to stop touching her, the warm hand feels like a soothing contrast to her shaking figure. 

“Pissed in the fucking cage like an animal. You a dog, huh? A little bitch that needs to be potty trained?” He asks her. All she could do is shake her head.

“I should put a collar on you. Make you walk on all fours. Walk you around the entire island so everyone sees these,” he runs his fingers over the deep engravings in her thigh. She jumps.

Tears well up in her eyes as she shakes her head frantically. He notices this.

“Let’s play a game. Since you can’t talk, you’re going to communicate in other ways.” He stands up and circles her in slow strides, dragging his fingers over the small of her back. When he makes his last rounds, he’s in her face now, grabbing her by the fat of her cheeks. 

“I’ll make it real…real fucking easy ‘cuz I’m real fucking generous. I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to shake your head for no and nod your head for yes. Yeah?” 

Dominique nods her head in response. 

“You know who did this to you?” He asks.

She nods her head.

“Is it one of my men on this island?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you know what the carvings on you mean?”

She shakes her head again.

“Are you lying to me?” 

She shakes her head furiously. 

The man scans over her and exhales slowly. His hand catches her chin and he strokes it. 

“Are you afraid of me?”

She nods her head.

He chuckles darkly. That hand circles her throat and she shudders in a breath. He massages her neck, his thumb taking circular strokes on her windpipe. She swallows in response, biting back the burning sensation in her throat.

His hand descends low to her sternum. He grabs one of her breasts, kneading it with his palm.

“I could snap your neck right here. Snap it and send the pictures to your family.”

She’s crying now, shaking her head so much it makes her dizzy. He laughs in her face, the hand thumbing her nipple now. 

Blood rushes to the valley between her thighs, her clitoris throbbing. That fucking hand pinches and teases, flicking her nipple until it stands at attention.

“I can be really…really nice.” He lands a kiss on her tender breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth.

She lets out a startled gasp. She wants him to stop, but the words won’t come. Instead, she sinks into her restraints as this monster sucks and licks at her breast like they’re lovers and not a deranged man who’d kidnapped her.

She shuts her eyes and tries to think of something else, something happy, something to distract the little zaps of pleasure tickling her spine. 

When she’s back at her apartment with her cat, the man slides his fingers inside. 

Her eyes snap open in horror. The man is staring at her, his hands methodically pumping into her.

“Don’t you fucking _escape_ me.” He snarls out. He pumps faster, the friction causing her pain. She tries to tighten her legs around his hand but it doesn’t help. She’s crying now, trying everything in her to scream for him to _stop_ , but no sound comes out. 

He doesn’t relent; those fingers brush against the spot in her that makes her legs shake and her head slam against the stripper pole. She’s falling apart at the seams, her orgasm coming whether she likes it or not. In a startled gasp, she comes. 

He slides them out of her and holds them up in her face. 

The overhead lights show his hands covered in her shame, with blood mixed in. 

“Open your fucking mouth.” He orders. When she obeys, he forces his fingers down her throat. She gags, twisting her head away but he forces her chin still with the other hand. She tastes blood, her come, and filth; if she’d eaten earlier she would’ve vomited. 

He slips the fingers out of her mouth and she coughs.

“You won't ignore me.” He tells her. That hand wraps around her throat again.

“Even if I have to carve my name into your fucking back.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dominique is feeling herself break down.

_“Alright, so Stix needs to be fed three times a day, with wet food mixed with her dry food. My vegetables on the patio need to be watered once a day, and I will be in constant touch with you via text and email. One more thing,” Dominique pulls out a slip of paper, “if anything happens to where you don’t hear from me in a span of three consecutive days, call this number and tell them to file a missing persons report on me and my friends.”_

_The house-sitter snorts._

_“That’s a little morbid, don’t you think?” She asks._

_“Alexa, people go missing everyday overseas. I want to make sure if something happens, my family gets a heads up before it’s too late.”_

The clock says five thirty, but the date says May 5th, 2008.

Dominique stares at the clock anyway, trying to find a sense of order.

She doesn’t know exactly how long it’s been since the kidnapping, but she knows it’s at least a week now. Days and nights blur so often it can make someone lose their grip on reality. This clock, she hates to admit it, is keeping her centered; it’s a semblance of structure in this chaos.

The island is awash with pirates and natives that are under her kidnapper’s thumb; he “rules this fucking kingdom”, and he proves it. These people are more scared of him than she is. The way they scramble out of his way and follow his commands without question is...disturbing, to say the least. A man with an unhinged mind and an unpredictable temper rules an entire island; she’d prefer someone with a cooler head and a stable mind but from what she’s seen with the pirates and natives, the man is a better fit.

She knows the man has a name; it’s Vaas, Vaas Montenegro if he tells it, but saying his name, even in her mind, leaves a bad taste in her mouth. It makes him human, and not the boogeyman who lurks in the shadows of her nightmares with those cold…eerie… _creepy_ …eyes.

Like clockwork, the door swings open and it’s him. He’s the only one that visits her; she’s tucked away in the entertainment room that’s across from his bedroom, two rooms no one goes near.

Forrest Gump is playing in the background; she props herself up off the waterbed and tries to make herself look busy.

He sits on the waterbed beside her; looking at her but not making eye contact. Dominique stills herself, trying to maintain the illusion of calm despite the fear.

Silence.

Jenny is shouting _”Run, Forrest! Run!”_ in the background.

Dominique swallows thickly.

“I know what I want to do with you.” He tells her. His hand grips her thigh.

Instinctively, she tenses up; her breathing quickens and her body breaks out into a cold sweat. Vaas notices her reflexes and wheezes out a laugh.

“Shh,” he shushes her, rubbing circles into her flesh, “I’m not going to kill you today. As long as you do what I say. Yeah?”

She nods her head, shuddering a breath.

“You cut hair, right?”

She nods her head.

“Good.”

He pulls out a straight razor.

“Cut me.”

 ~~~~

Dominique works the shaving cream, travel-sized shampoo with water, into a lather, her back turned to Vaas. He’s lying in his chair, neck exposed and a rag draped over him like a makeshift smock. She swishes the lather and makes her way to her… _client_.

She rubs the shaving cream into his jawline and neck, taking care to skim her thumb over his Adam’s apple. He hands her the razor but he grips her hand tightly.

“You even think about slitting my throat or cutting me, and I’ll gut you like a fucking fish.”

She couldn’t do it if she wanted to; she already thought about the consequences. If she killed him, right here, right now, where would she go? 

Her frame of reference is this entertainment room, she’s outnumbered, and the pirates, despite being horrific in their own right, falls in line when Vaas gives orders. 

Killing him would do her more harm than good.

She wishes she could tell him all of this, but instead resigns to nodding her head to show she understood.

He lets her hand go and she gets to work, shaving the stubble that grows on his neck. For the hard to reach spots she leans in closer, holding his neck to get at the more precise angles. He looks up at her when she works, those eyes burning holes into her chest. Her new outfit of a shirt that bunches up over her rolls of fat and a sarong she has to secure every five minutes leaves little to the imagination. The shirt has a v-neck, giving him ample cleavage she didn’t ask for.

Ignoring his judging sweeps over her body, she checks for any defiant hairs that won’t get cut.

Given the cramped space, she lands herself on his lap to get closer, their bodies melding together.

She knows this is awkward; she’s straddling his hips, breasts pressed against him as she’s making sure she’s being more precise with her cuts. It doesn’t help his hands are grabbing the swell of her ass like she’s going to float away.

She finishes and rises to his jawline to map out how he wants his facial hair. Clean cut, little fuss, with a small beard and goatee combo to prove his manliness.

She steps back and holds up her mirror, a shard of glass she’d found lying in a pile of junk He observes himself, rubbing at his smooth skin. He hums in approval; Dominique lets out a sigh of relief.

“Clean up the Mohawk.” He commands. She gets to work, slicing through the spikes of hair that don’t belong and shapes his hair using soap and water. She steps back and lets him eye himself once more.

“Not bad. Looks like you have a use after all,” He surmises. She nods her head and curtly makes her way to the exit.

“Did I say you can fucking leave?”

She stopped in her tracks.

He pats his lap, gesturing for her to sit on it.

She does, feeling his eyes burning holes into her. 

He’s watching her, eyes flickering over the points of her face. That bandaged hand comes to grab at her cheek, smearing filth on it in an almost affectionate manner.

“You know what I fucking like about you?” He asks her. She shakes her head.

“You don’t fucking talk.”

He wheezes out a laugh, gripping her arm as if she’s in on the joke.

“You’re quiet…it makes me…think, you know? I can fucking hear myself think. No, ‘Vaas, don’t kill me! I have kids!’ ‘Vaas, please don’t shoot me, I have money, I promise!’.” He mimics in a high-pitched voice before laughing.

“It’s quiet. Fucking silent. I love that! How often can I spend time with a bitch and she doesn’t make me want to…put a _.bullet_ , through her skull,” he gestures to his head with his two fingers, “with her fucking talking? Huh?”

She could only blink and nod her head, hoping it would suffice. That’s enough for Vaas; his joking demeanor is gone, replaced with a stone expression. His hand slid from her arm to her thigh, giving it a squeeze. His hand slides up her thigh to cup her sex and she jerks upright, clamping her thighs shut. That only eggs Vaas on; he starts rubbing her, spreading her lips apart to rub her clitoris.

A shuddering gasp escapes her; he laughs in her ear.

“You know what I love about quiet girls?” He asks, thumbing at the bundle of nerves with a gentleness that’s foreign to her.

“They’re always fun to play with.”

His fingers slipped inside of her without any preparation; she’s still sore from the last time and she grits her teeth in pain. Vaas slides his dry fingers out of her and hawks spit all over them before reinserting them. He’s going slow, his eyes never leaving hers.

She’s learned the hard way to not disappear in this.

“Open your legs,” he tells her. She obeys, giving him deeper access.

This goes on for what felt like hours, his two fingers slowly pumping into her sore body, forced to maintain eye contact as he studies her. When he brushes against that spot she arches her back and shoots her hand to grab his.

He laughs.

“Getting a little bossy, eh?” 

Realizing her mistake, she shakes her head furiously and yanks her hand away from his like she’s been burned.

The damage had already been done.

He slips his fingers out of her and grabs her hand, guiding it to her sex.

“Show me how you get off.” He says into the shell of her ear.

She shakes her head softly, pleading with her eyes for an ounce of mercy.

Those creepy eyes denied her request.

With shaky fingers, she rubs at her clitoris, trying to detach herself from this.

“Is this how you masturbate at home? All stiff-like?” Vaas’ voice cracks through the atmosphere.

“I know you do more than that. You look like the type to have toys and shit. You can use your fingers. Come on, honey. Get yourself off.”

His hands grab and prod her breasts, his lips sucking on the flesh where her neck and collarbone meet.

She’s on autopilot, her hand gaining its rhythm and moving on its own. She tries to focus on the gritty floor, the abandoned stripper pole, the bolts on the door blocking her freedom. She closes her eyes for a second and when she opened them, Vaas is looking right at her. She shudders in a gasp when her body jolts into his body, her hand moving faster. She buries her face into the crook of his neck, panting as she finally feels pleasure in this.

“There you go,” Vaas coaxes in her ear, “that’s it.”

She blocks his voice out of her mind, focusing on her pleasure. She’s not here, she’s anywhere but here, she’s not feeling Vaas’ dick hardening against her stomach and hand.

Her arm hurts but her orgasm is approaching.

“Look at me.”

Their eyes meet.

Her climax is right on the threshold. His hand wraps around her throat right as she’s about to come. When she orgasms and bucks against him, he holds her still with one arm wrapped around her body.

She comes down from her orgasmic high with deep breaths, trying to slide out of his grasp but he holds her there.

Silence.

Vaas releases her; she gains her footing and straightens her clothes, pausing and looking at Vaas for his next move.

“Get the fuck out of my sight.” He commands.

Dominique skitters away from him and leaves, holding her head in shame.

~~~ 

She doesn’t know where she is, but she knows she doesn’t belong.

She sees men in red bandanas eyes her and chatter amongst themselves in gruff dialects. She walks past a group of women who shake their heads at her, their judgement of her far from subtle.

She holds her head down and walks faster. She walks until she reaches a shack that has neon lights flickering in the shadows.

Entering, she takes a seat in front of a bar. A battered woman is cleaning a cracked clay cup with a rag that’s seen better days, her swollen left eye catching the purple neon light. She’s got dark skin that’s marred with bruises and cuts, her curly hair dull and tangled. Her purple tank top clings to her body, an outline of a rosary peeking through.

The woman’s good eye locks with Dominique’s and time freezes. 

“I was wondering when I’d see you.”

Dominique runs into the woman’s arms, her silent tears heard by an old friend.

~~~

Water sloshes in the bucket. Dominique tucks into herself, exposed to Carmen, who’s humming and scrubbing at her back with a soapy rag.

They’re in the brothel, out back, with the Carmen dousing and scrubbing away the filth and shame that’s caked on to Dominique’s scarred body.

“You smell worse than the men.” She huffs, wringing out the rag before dunking it into the soapy solution.

Dominique wants to tell her she hasn’t bathed in days, not since the last encounter with Vaas. Even that encounter didn’t count considering he threw water onto her and left her there. She smells the soap; it smells like jasmine and citrus. How she got her hands on soap like that is beyond her.

“It’s been weeks since we’d seen each other...thought he’d killed you. I heard...what he wanted with you. _His new toy._ ”

Dominique winces, but regains her composure. Carmen’s hands grab a hold of her remaining braids and twists them out the way to wash at her neck.

“You should make your hair shorter. When you run, these,” she tugs at her braids, “are the first things they grab before they catch you.”

“Trust me,” Carmen adds in a grim tone, “ _You don’t want them to catch you._ ”

Ice slides down Dominique’s back.

~~~~

She tries not to look at herself in the mirror when Carmen grabs the last of her braids and slices them off without so much as a warning, but she can’t help herself.

The hair she’d spent years growing is gone, tumbling to the grimy ground with soft thumps from the braids. 

She rubs at her hair, only feeling scalp and patches of matted kinky hair. 

Carmen holds the razorblade in her hand, touching Dominique’s shoulder gingerly.

“I could…” she trails off. Dominique shakes her head in response, taking the razorblade in her hand and preparing the soapy water to make a lather. She shorns off the patches of hair until she’s completely bald. Rubbing her fingers over her bald head, she, for the first time since she’d gotten here, cries.

**Author's Note:**

> This story used to be The Hairstylist, but since it's a new year and I've learned some writer tricks along the way (i.e. learning how to plan out a story instead of writing a chapter and seeing where it goes, causing your readers to wait months at a time because you wrote yourself into a ditch you can't get out of *ahem*) and decided this story needs a much needed makeover and so, here is, The Quiet One, with a new premise but a remotely same concept. Hope you guys enjoy it!


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